khtrlfandomcom-20200216-history
The Dead Length
Regions within the Dead Length: *'The Observatory Gate' - Beacon-marked. **An enormous circular structure, more or less intact, with many windows to the outside in its dome and walls. Externally, a large flat platform has been built atop the dome for observational purposes. Internally, a second balcony holds its many destroyed bookshelves and overlooks a mechanical orrery, the construction of which dates back many thousands of years. *Black Sands **A ceaseless, glittering black desert crisscrossed with crumbling roads and the skeletons and carriages of ancient caravans. This realm is swelteringly hot and has very little viable shade, save on the road. *'Washukhani Trade City' - Beacon-marked. **A badly eroded city built into the canyon wall, suffering constant basic rain. All of its citizens seem to have disappeared. Its buildings are completely empty, usually emptied even of furniture and basic amenities. Since the beacon stabilized the area, the rain has stopped. **Washukhani has an outpost of sorts, staffed by The People. Its barriers are constructed of tower shields no longer needed by their former bearers. **Somewhere above the city, likely on the canyon mouth, mutated gnolls keep residence. There seems to be a long-standing conflict between the gnolls and the outpost. **Something lurks in the water below the city. *The Corpse Garden ** A stone path leading through a dreary gloom, occasional trees providing cover of darkness for the long-wilted flowers and smooth-worn idols of this place. ** Along the path, bound human skeletons responded to living passers-by. Seemingly harmless, they nonetheless tracked and gaped at all passing life. *Forgotten Reservoir ** Trapped between places. Trapped within its brackish water, an old, dead god. *'Kisch Scholarly Enclave' - Beacon-marked. **Simultaneously a massive jail and a massive college of study, the scholarly enclave seems to have been thoroughly pillaged. All that remains is scraps of badly damaged paper and parchment, furniture, and dust - aside from the horrific experiments that continue here. **At its apex, the Scholarly Enclave held a special chamber housing 36 eyeless mummies joined into a meta-mind of continual information exchange. **Somewhere within the Enclave, an individual is or was crafting new and disgusting constructs from cadavers. *** A Hero of Old had perished here: Nuisa. *Choking Orchards ** A maze of stonework, trees, and vines. Statues push and pull its boundaries to ensnare approaching travellers. ** At some point, the orchards ensnared the otherworldly prison of Agapitha, father of Thaumaturgy. A structure of his own creation. The prison was bound in thermal circuitry and clad in iron, and - according to Agapitha - should have been adrift in the void. ** An insidious trap lay within the orchards, seemingly of Kussgan origin. A wire sought to behead individuals entering a chamber who faced improper directions or attempted to leave it with a particular ring. ** Also found in the orchards was a statue of Rava which, when broken, was revealed to contain an impossibly large monstrosity of sinew and teeth. *Terraced Farms of Lagash ** A community of despondent adventurers, surrounded by scores of the muted, blinded, mummified corpses of its founder, Hanesh, a scholar of ancient Shandu. ** Somehow, the bodies form a circle of stability against the fractured nature of modern Shandu. ** Within the Ring of Hanesh, individuals felt profoundly complacent, and only moreso with time. Those who seek its safety rarely leave, and eventually, cannot. *** A Hero of Old had taken up residence here: Belleroz. *'Township of Lagash '- Beacon-marked. ** Slick with a jellylike substance, the township was divided by a massive canal choked with animate dead reaching for what light they could find. A curious wooden building hung over the canal, presumably but one of the houses controlling the portcullises barring the bridges of the township. ** An aqueduct from some other place had fallen across it, destroying many of the buildings and barring two of the canal's bridges from passage. ** A massive, forboding temple lay in the north of the city. It was not disturbed. ** An occultist's residence provided brief respite and relative safety from the living dead. *** Two Heroes of Old lingered here: Draven, perished and become mighty and wrathful; Baurys, accursed and claimed the Satrap's seat. *Churux-Spasinu Expanse ** A massive, flattened former-city. Churux-Spasinu was once two cities, predictably Churux and Spasinu, merged into one major centre of trade; before Shandu's spatial relations broke, Churux-Spasinu was the first site upon which the sky fell. When the sky fell, it crushed the city almost entirely, leaving only the very peaks of its tallest towers with any degree of structural integrity. ** Two cloaked figures, a Kav and a Mheun were found looking over a supposed member of the Learned Expedition that had ventured to Shandu in an effort to repair its dimensional damage through science. This was not that individual, but several of his things were found there. *** The diminutive Mheun of the pair claimed his/her name to be "Wing". The Kav provided no name, but claimed to be "perfection". ** A "woman" lurks in the ruins, apparently able to turn people to stone. Many statues expressing various states of interest, disinterest, and dismay have been seen in the area. The party was slain. But is death not permanent? What, then, is death? All prior notes pertain to the state of reality prior to the collective deaths of that party. * Mirror of the Betrayer *Hatra, City of Tombs *The Mouth of Farewells *The Eternal Maze *Assour, City of the Gods *The Yawning Miasma *Burning Tunnels of Artapakhta *Opis, Impossible City *The Profound Darkness *Akha-Medean Gyre *Cuthaphon, the Barony Out-Of-Place *The Pallashu Blasphemy Site *The Gates of Wisdom and Learning *Shandu Outer City *Shandu Forbidden City *The Desolate Palace The House of Many Doors The House of Fiends Category:Shandu Category:Cursed Domains